


Soul of Shadows

by tielan



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Psychics/Psionics, Alternate Universe - Werecreatures, F/M, First Meetings, Psy-Changelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-02
Updated: 2013-10-02
Packaged: 2017-12-28 05:34:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/988299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Raleigh sees her is in the rain – a figure of mist and shadows beneath the spreading umbrella-like branches of a palm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soul of Shadows

The first time Raleigh sees her is in the rain – a figure of mist and shadows beneath the spreading umbrella-like branches of a palm at the edge of the pack’s territory. He halts at the edge of the treeline, hesitating at this first encounter with the pack again, even as Pentecost strides in without fear for his welcome.

He and the woman exchange words too soft for him to hear, although he can tell the intonations aren’t English. Then the Alpha turns and gestures him forward as the woman turns away and crouches down. Raleigh shifts back to human as she turns back with her hands full of clothing, and his breath catches.

It’s _her_.

Pentecost’s voice is a distant introduction. “This is Mako Mori, senior soldier of the Jaeger Pack.”

Her brows lift as their gazes meet. Her hands twitch reflexively on the clothing she holds out to him. Her scent is sharp and startled in the air between them.

And Raleigh’s wolf strains against his skin, shoving at his self-control in a way that it hasn’t done in all the years of running alone, lunging to be let free.

He hears her words to Pentecost – Japanese, polite and deprecating. “ _I imagined him differently._ ”

_And I wasn’t expecting you at all,_ he thinks, but he can’t blurt that out like a raw fool, even if his wolf is pushing at his senses, wanting to roll in her scent, wanting to feel her hands in his fur. 

“ _Better_ ,” Raleigh asks in Japanese, “ _or worse_?”

She blinks, and now her surprise is tinged with the muddled warmth of her embarrassment. “ _I apologise, Mr. Becket. I’ve heard a great deal about you._ ”

He wants to ask what she’s heard, to know what she thinks of him, but she offers him the bundle of clothing – canvas trousers with a drawstring waist, and a white sweater that he recognises as though from another life – and so he just nods, swallows his questions down like a lump in his throat, and takes the clothing from her.

Their hands don’t touch in the exchange, as much as Raleigh wants them to. Instead his fingers curl in solid weave and soft knit, as though he could absorb the warmth of her through the fabric she held.

His wolf wants to lunge and grab and hold and not let go; but the human side of him is saying _softly, softly_ because she might be Pack but she sure isn’t Changeling, so she can’t be feeling what he’s feeling. She can’t imagine that the man standing naked before her with his arms full of clothing is anything other than a stranger.

Not yet, anyway.

Yancy used to shake his head at the idea that there might be one person in all the world for him; too many women (and men) in the world, he said, to settle on just one. If he found his mate, then so be it, but he wasn’t going to go looking for her (or him). And Raleigh, younger and quite content to be free with his favours, could never envision needing anyone that way – breath and bone and heart and home – even when Yancy was dead and he was alone.

Now he can’t imagine his world without Mako Mori in it.

**Author's Note:**

> Pacific Rim AU fusion with Nalini Singh’s _Psy-Changelings_ universe, in which Stacker is Alpha of the Jaeger Changeling pack who's claimed Hong Kong city as their territory.


End file.
